You may have noticed a distinct lack of return2ozma. This is due to their admitting, in a public comment, that their engagement here is in bad faith:
I’m sure there will be questions, let me see if I can address the most obvious ones:
- Can I still post negative stuff about Biden?
Absolutely! We have zero interest in running an echo chamber. However, if ALL you’re posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. You get out of the world what you put into it and all that.
- Why now?
Presumption of innocence. It may be my own fault, but I do try to think the best of people, and even though they were posting negative articles, they weren’t necessarily WRONG. Biden’s poll numbers, particularly in minority demographics ARE in the shitter. They are starting to get better, but he still has a hell of a hill to climb.
- Why a 30 day temp ban and not a permanent ban?
The articles return2ozma shared weren’t bad, faked, or from some wing-nut bias site like “beforeitsnews.com”, they were legitimate articles from established and respected news agencies, pointing out the valid problems Biden faces.
The problem was ONLY posting the negatives, over and over and then openly admitting that dishonest enagement is their purpose.
Had they all been bullshit articles? It would not have taken anywhere near this much time to lay the ban and it would have been permanent.
30 days seems enough time for them to re-think their strategery and come back to engage honestly.
Good move, they were a clown and pointing out that they were arguing entirely in bad faith is correct. They did it under the guise of being far-leftist, but as a far-leftist myself, I have a hard time believing it was for anything other than pissing people off. Hopefully they can go practice being happy instead of doom-posting on niche Internet forums.
I have a hard time believing it was for anything other than pissing people off.
this is why I blocked them. Also, kinda felt I didn’t want to be seeing his crap. Biden is an awful candidate but R20 ain’t helping matters.
Look, I have zero illusions to how popular of a decision this is in this comm, and this isn’t my instance so who the fuck cares what I think.
but
I have a very hard time seeing this as anything other than a disagreement over personal political tastes, rather than anything to do with a violation of some unwritten rule. Your comm already has rules regarding article quality, misinformation, and off-topic posts and comments that could be used as a justification here if it applied. If there was a problem with the volume of posts for which he was responsible (i think this is the legitimate concern here), then you could either call it spamming or there could easily be a rule added limiting the number of posts per day that applies globally and isn’t reliant on subjective judgement.
I’ve been very vocal about my own political opinions, and have myself been accused of bad-faith trolling and of being a covert agent of some type or other. Speaking for myself, I think there’s a pretty obvious bias (maybe preference is a more fair term) when it comes to the coverage and rhetoric about the upcoming election in the US specifically. There’s legitimacy to the observation that inconvenient bad press about Biden is ignored/rationalized/dismissed on a ‘lesser evil’ and ‘at all costs’ political rationale that I (and I think ozma) tend to react negatively to. Breaking through the iron curtain of electoral politics to people who genuinely share political values (not all of them, mind you) sometimes involves repeated reminders and presentation of counter-partisan coverage. I personally appreciate ozma’s contributions because often these posts and articles encourage real discussions about the limitations of this particular politician, and people like @mozz@mbin.grits.dev frequently jump in and provide nuanced dissection and context to what would otherwise be an easily dismissed issue.
This is not my instance so It’s not up to my judgment what the right or wrong thing to do is here, but .world being an instance that has already de-federated with most others with louder left-leaning politics, the overton window has already been considerably narrowed. By removing the loudest dissenters (who are ‘not wrong, just assholes’), you run the risk of warping reality for those who don’t care enough to confront coverage they might find uncomfortable and might prefer a more quiet space to affirm their politics instead of being challenged. You’re cultivating an echo chamber simply by cutting out the noise you find disagreeable. The goal of agitation is to get exactly those people to engage more so that we can move the overton window further left and accomplish more at the electoral level in the future. It isn’t ‘bad faith’ to be motivated by that goal, it just might be unfair to people who are comfortable with where that window currently is and would rather not be challenged by it moving further left.
- Is okay: Having a viewpoint, whatever the viewpoint
- Isn’t okay: Pushing a particular chosen viewpoint regardless of how well it aligns with the information you’re drawing from, being upfront about that being your strategy, and then following through to a beyond-parody level of annoying everyone and repeating yourself day in and day out
IDK why everyone’s so eager to read a pretty detailed explanation of why the issue isn’t his viewpoint, and then follow up right away with extensive hand wringing over the idea of censoring his viewpoint.
Because it’s pretty clearly about his viewpoint, since the cited comment in the post is ‘this is my viewpoint, and that viewpoint is why i’m posting these things’
If it’s about the volume of posts call it spamming and address it with a rule about post limits. Calling it bad-faith is necessarily about the reason he’s making the posts, not how many of them there are or the quality of the articles.
I have a new idea: Anyone who wants to hide behind “I am posting this as a far left person, to help the left, because I care super much about the left and if you don’t like my viewpoint you are clearly a shitlib censoring my helpful left viewpoint of shitting relentlessly on Biden,” has to post at least a 1:1 ratio of posts in favor of ranked choice voting, or local helpful leftist candidates, or directing people to a Palestine protest, or some left helpful viewpoint that isn’t “let’s have Trump come to power because Biden isn’t everything I hoped and dreamed for, as for-sure genuine leftist.”
If the shills are gonna accuse people of policing viewpoint let’s police some fuckin viewpoints, to make sure they make some sense
(Note: I am clearly joking about this. Mostly.)
[if ALL you’re posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. ]
It’s okay to do that about a specific politician if that is your true opinion. However, it does seem like this person was arguing in bad faith by admitting he is aware things are not as bad as his posts seem.
by admitting he is aware things are not as bad as his posts seem.
Let’s do a little mental exercise. What does this next line imply?
Both good and bad news about Trump is out there. I prefer to share the bad news
The only ones arguing in bad are the ones completely twisting what he said to find an implication that does not exist and accuse him of it.
The irony of someone constantly being banned from here for misinformation, here to defend an admitted propagandist.
Weren’t you just accusing this community of supporting Israel in another post somewhere? Ahh yes, here it is:
You should know /politics and /news ban anyone critical of israel and Lemmy.world is ran by Zionists.
Wasn’t that you?
As I recall, you said you weren’t posting here anymore.
Amazing you managed to not respond to a single argument and went for ad hominems and proving my point.
Nothing here is ad hominem if it’s true. You HAVE been banned for misinformation, you ARE defending OP
There is no argument to respond to as you’ve not made one.
I am unsure why you are appealing to authority in a post questioning said authority.
If you have nothing but ad-hominems I have nothing to respond to anymore.
I think I agree more with the spam angle than the “only bad news” angle. As others have said it’s fine to have a viewpoint and mainly share articles in line with that viewpoint. However doing it many times per day, every day, when the number of posts here is limited anyway, does impact the community.
In any case, the main thing is to be consistent and ideally make whatever the rule is very clear. And I would say this should be turned into an explicit rule or explanation under an existing rule.
Personally I just read what I want to, and if it seems bad faith, downvote and move on.
i agree, jordanlund is opening themselves up for extra scrutiny with this.
spam and displaying signs of getting off on angering users (trolling) is absolutely a valid and nonpartisan reason for a ban. but as soon as the mods start citing actual politics (outside of clear examples of misinfo, which is not in play here) it gets dicey and accusations of bias pile up fast, which is exactly what we are seeing play out right in these comments.
I’m sorry but how is that admitting bad faith? Feels more like just saying they’re posting the negative because no one else is.
Only posting bad news about one person is trolling. They weren’t here to engage honestly.
Please explain how that’s trolling when said person keeps doing things to warrant bad press?
You say it’s okay to post negative stories about Biden but then say if we say we’re posting negative stories that means a ban?
Biden doesn’t have enough slips to merit the number of negative posts, and the absence of anything positive indicates he was only here to stir shit up.
It IS possible to mention that Biden’s numbers are improving (they are) or that the (Murdoch owned) WSJ article was bullshit:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4704853-white-house-wall-street-journal-biden/
careful haha i’m with you for most of this thread but this comment dives into an argument that weakens your position i think.
i didn’t block that account because of the number of negative biden posts. personally i blocked them because they kept being abusive to people in the comments in a way that they clearly enjoyed, aka trolling. (i don’t think personally i ever even noticed the biden thing, just that they were mean a lot.) i think it’s enough to ban them for abusing the platform in a way that is contra to the average user having a constructive experience (and then admitting to the means of it)—you don’t really need to stoop to counting Biden’s “slips” as that is just opening yourself for more dissent
cheers ☕️☀️
And now that the pro-genocide users have griped long enough and loudly enough to get ozma banned, they’ll find another target.
One can only hope you’re next
don’t feed the trolls 😜❤️ this is precisely the response they wanted
pro-genocide users
Speaking of bad faith…
Speaking of finding another target.
making a self fulfilling prophecy like “if i get banned it’s because of ‘pro genocide users’” and not taking accountability for your own actions is a very trump circa 2019-20 thing to do
heads up lol
He admitted to me, after I accused him, that he searches a news aggregator for “Biden” daily and posts the negative stuff he sees. I believe he said it was to hold dems accountable or something. That exchange was maybe a month or two back and might have been either here or on !news@lemmy.world
If I do a search for puppy mills every day and only post the negative things, is that bad faith?
If you’re posting to Aww? Absolutely.
Thats not a bad faith argument anymore than a liberal posting something bad about trump because it fits their narrative. Like many leftists I hate democrats more than Republicans because Republicans don’t pretend to care. Republicans will tell you to your face who they are, democrats will lie to your face about inclusion and acceptance and proceed to legislate like their conservative counterparts.
Normally I’m not one to even entertain the thought of commenting on a political thread, but I feel it would be disingenuous to click the button without any feedback in this case. This decision leaves me with a large enough lack of confidence in the future moderation of this community(especially given we’re in an election year) such that I can’t in good faith leave it on my feed and I will be blocking this comm after this comment.
While I agree that Ozma deserved a ban for spam, the justification used for this is frankly appalling. Misrepresentation of bias as bad-faith, especially with the admission that largely good sources were used is unacceptable.
@jordanlund@lemmy.world
It’s really disappointing to see you constantly delete comments you perceive as rude or uncivil with extreme vigilance but then be stupid enough to allow bad faith posters like return2ozma repeatedly try to control political narratives for months on end. I’m really tired of seeing your name in the Modlog policing politeness but then sleeping on issues like this. Anyone with half a brain could have recognized ozma’s dishonesty a long time ago.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for the mess you’ve allowed to propagate for an extended period of time, you ought to consider extending the 30 day ban to a permanent one, and you have to be better moving forward.
The difference is civility violatons are 100% unambiguous.
What Ozma was doing required absolute proof and that did not exist until their admission.
I think you should have given them a three day ban earlier as a warning. Three day bans are nothing. I used to be a moderator and have been banned myself. Three days is like a timeout, and no one is hurt. It just says “cut it out”.
Thor from PirateSoftware tells his channel mods to hand out 1-3hr bans like candy. They aren’t overly harsh, and sends the message that your actions are seen and being noted.
I’m sure that troll account will behave from now on /s
Hey, a permaban is always on the table. ;)
I find it’s about 70/30 when it comes to temp bans. 7/10 I get PMs of “sorry, I’ll do better” and then 3/10 it’s… well… (note, this was a different user)
Yikes -ee-ola
That’s unhinged
Oh no a clearly leftist user said bad things about Biden. Next thing you know he posts bad things abuot israel too.
Hey look my 1month ban for absolutely nothing just expired. At least its clear now that criticism of Biden == Ban.
What’s the difference between r/conservative and c/politics, the color of the MAGA hat?
Absolutely nothing? Were you spinning “Israeli interests secretly control the entire world” conspiracy theories over here too, or was that just in c/technology?
Oh look it’s another made up ad-hominem. Responding to the actual argument is too hard so let’s just change the subject.
Unfortunately I can’t bring reciepts on account of your screeds getting rightfully binned by the moderators, but there is a difference between:
“The Jewish people have a strong history of valuing education that’s put a lot of them into the middle and upper classes and have also historically been the victims of vicious oppression, and the Israeli state has never been shy about using either of those things as a cudgel to get away with their own human rights abuses”
and
“Israel is secretly in control of Intel and other vast swathes of the Western economy and are manipulating everything behind the scenes for their nefarious ends!”
The latter of which is what you were spewing in the Technology community a few weeks ago and earned the ban-hammer over there, and which makes up a not-inconsiderable part of the rest of your comment history. I find Israel’s history of oppression – which, to be clear, extends not just to Palestinians but to the non-Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora as well – and their current war crime spree in Gaza utterly abhorrent, but you’ve let yourself run all the way to “actually the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were kinda true” in opposition, and that’s some racist shit which you’ve been rightly banned over from multiple communities. You can oppose the Israeli state without engaging in rank antisemitism.
straw man ad hominem straw man ad hominem. Make up random lies. Wow great arguments so far.
i have my disagreements with this community’s mod team but i do appreciate this step.
i fucking hate biden too, but i blocked that account long ago because they clearly were here to troll and do nothing else. anyone who wants to pick up the perceived “torch” and do what they were doing in good faith this time is more than welcome in my book. i really welcome diversity of posts when the person behind it isn’t clearly getting a kick out of the rage they stir up.